Elisabeth St Blaise McCarthy

I was retaining her to revise a living trust. She asked for a copy of it & a trustee sent her one of just two original copies. I am not sure why but after she made a copy she never attempted to return the original. Weeks later I asked her to return him his original & she was sending it out. ... When I realized she had too much of what I believe was a conflict of interest with the beneficiary I was adding who I think is not an upright person ( a charity) I thought a lawyer who works for them and me wasn’t a good idea. I thought at first to wait until she mailed the original back before telling her I was going to go with another atty with no ties to any beneficiaries in case she turned on me but i didn’t want to give an appearance of dishonesty just because I was thought she may, or was worried she may not send it back if I told her so I chose to take a chance and be honest with her and exactly as I feared she then said she’s not going to send it back to the trustee even when I told her I’d pay her..She said I should send her a label for FedEx which she knew I couldn’t do from earlier discussions as I don’t have an account and am getting over Covid so can’t go into the city to get it right now. So she'll be keeping one of two original and notarized trusts. I don't regret being honest with her rather than hiding the fact I was not going to use her until after she mailed the trust back .. I don't want to allow myself to be that way even when others really don't deserve that benefit of the doubt as she proved unworthy of. I'm going to keep my review limited to that and not give any personal opinions of what I think of her or of her keeping the trust other than I don’t recommend her . Her fees on a side note for those interested are $745 an hour. Before I knew she'd literally stop the shipment of an original document, maybe she just didn't trust me to pay her the cost ( despite I'd just sent an over $600 gift to the woman who referred me to her as a thank you ) and had ordered her a very expensive Tory Burch bag as a thank you despite I'd be going with another Atty but I wanted to keep it classy and not make her feel bad about moving in a different direction and send her something beautiful as a thank you. I have a zoom with the other lawyer tomorrow to go over the changes and she's simply using an electronic rather than an original copy of the trust .